


nothing to remember except the story

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Series: Firebird [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (Newt is just barely mentioned), Character Study, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Graves is part fae, Magical Realism, Newt is part lamia, Racism, Southern Gothic, War violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9198200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: Seraphina is twelve years old when she’s sorted into all four houses–the first time that has ever happened. They all whisper to her,come, bring your bravery to us, bring your intelligence, bring your wit your cunning your heart. Bring your fire,Horned Serpent hisses and she shudders.Bring that fire heart to us, we’ll hone you, we’ll make you what you want, what you deserve.She picks Horned Serpent and that's just the  beginning of her story.





	

Seraphina is twelve years old when she’s sorted into all four houses—the first time that has ever happened. They all whisper to her, _come, bring your bravery to us, bring your intelligence, bring your wit your cunning your heart. Bring your fire,_ Horned Serpent hisses and she shudders. _Bring that fire heart to us, we’ll hone you, we’ll make you what you want, what you deserve._ She picks Horned Serpent, and since then she’s been gunning for control the moment she opened her first governmental magic book.

When she reads the first line, _The president of MaCUSA is arguably one of the hardest roles in the government today–the president must be smart and well-versed in all policy, and must be a talented auror that inspires loyalty and pride wherever he goes_ —that’s when she knows. She will be there one day.

She meets Percival Graves in Defense Against the Dark Arts at thirteen years old. He’s not a Horned Serpent, though she privately thinks he should be. He’s smart and dedicated and ruthless and he’s determined to knock her out of her number one spot for their year. It will not happen.

It never does. She excels in everything she does–no-maj studies, potions, government, dark arts. Dark Arts especially.

She remembers Violetta telling her, _These wands take to Dark magic like a vampire to blood._

She doesn’t want to think about what that means.

-

Percival Graves is an interesting sort, Seraphina discovers during that Defense Against the Dark Arts class. She knows his family, everybody does, with that strange, strange blood—his father’s changeling eyes and his mother’s severe pale face. But Graves is wild—his hair is overly long and his teeth are too sharp, and he uses wandless magic more than his wand.

“You’re Percival Graves, aren’t you? Are you going to live up to your name or not? I need to know if I should move and sit next to somebody with potential.” In hindsight, she probably could have been a little nicer, but Graves, after a long slow blink, bares his teeth, and she has a full view of sharp canines.

“You can bet on it. Don’t trip on your own legacy, Miss Picquery.” _Oh,_ she thinks, smiling faintly down at her parchment, _this will be fun._

-

What most people don’t know about her is that she has a sister. Much older—her father married again to a younger woman to produce her—but her sister is a potions master, a slick, sharp-eyed, thin-boned beast of a thing. Seraphina doesn’t know her well, doesn’t understand her pale skin and hollow eyes. Seraphina takes after her mother after all, darker skin and warm generous mouth, and a jawline that could cut a diamond.

There is something about her that doesn't seem real, like she's a second or two from smoking out of existence. Much later in life she'll recognize that trait. But her half sister dies in an explosion of her own making, a potion gone wrong, and Seraphina sees her father grieving as if from a distance.

No, Seraphina has never related to her father. It’s her mother whom they should be scared of.

-

It’s the winter of her fifth year, and she’s home, away from the frigid air and temperature that makes her skin ashy and her breath frosty like a cloud.

“Sera,” her mother says warmly, and she lets herself be enveloped by her strong arms, her scent of honeysuckle and something muskier, earthy.

The house sighs around them, creaking slow like it’s settling into its bones. It only ever stops screaming when her mother is there—regal and statuesque like a queen, dark hair fluffed around her face.

“The ghosts have been talking about you, firefly,” she says, tipping her chin up with her fingers. Seraphina gazes at her quietly. “Getting into fights with that Graves boy, are you? Be careful of that one. There’s old magic in those lines.”

Seraphina shrugs. “He’s unconstrained.” Her mother stares at her for a long moment.

“What a strange word to use,” she says, almost to herself. Her face looks serious and she kneels down. “Remember this, firefly.” Her gaze seem to burn like embers and Seraphina stares at her own wild white hair in the reflection of her eyes. “Remember this. You’re the daughter of a tribe that no one in this country has seen. You have power deep in those bones, the ones that let you feel the screams from our kin in the grounds of this house. Don’t let _anyone_ try to contain you.”

She takes Seraphina’s wand and holds it in the palm of her hand, the violet hilt glinting in the candlelight. “Purple is the color of royalty,” she says, and her voice seems to fill the whole room, a physical thing that curls in the air and settles on Seraphina’s shoulders. “It has chosen you for a reason.”

-

A bolt of white magic shoots towards her and she flicks it away with her wand before firing back, wordless, breathless, her left hand burning with that fire—magic she always tries to push down, always tries not to let out for fear it will burn everyone down.

Graves points his hand at her and shouts out a spell and she swerves away, barely missing the wild crackle of red. _Unconstrained,_ she thinks, hears her mother’s voice— _what a strange word_ —and volleys back. It goes back and forth like this until Professor Martin tells them to stop. Graves looks savage-eyed, like he’s just barely reached his maximum amount of energy, and she knows she looks cool, unruffled.

“You’re predictable, Phina,” he tells her when he shakes her hand. “Precision perfect, but predictable.”

Her eyes narrow. “That stunning spell of yours would have hit me if you’d had an ounce of precision, _Percival._ ” Graves’ lips curl up in a little snarl, but his eyes are bright.

“Maybe you should try your hand at wandless magic.”

“Maybe you should learn to use a wand.”

Professor Martin starts to shift his weight forward but then Graves grins, fully, sharp teeth standing out, and the bell rings loudly for the lunch break.

Later that night, she finds a note tucked in her scarf. _Slippery fingers,_ she thinks, amused.

_Meet in the Nook of Necessity tomorrow after dinner._

-

Here is the thing about Percival Graves—the blood that runs inside him is filled with wild power, old and unfathomable and hard to control. It’s what makes him look like he’s been electrocuted, like he’s damn near shaking out of his skin.

Here’s another thing about Percival Graves—Seraphina doesn’t trust the name. She doesn’t trust the aristocratic old money, the high-brow tradition, the judgmental glittering eyes.

But when he looks at her, attentive, wary, watchful, and listens to her tell him that magic like his doesn’t have to be chained, but can be reigned, can be tucked inside of him ready to be unleashed at any moment with a flick of his hand, or, for more precision, his wand, she finds she likes his company.

And when he fearlessly takes her left hand, pressed palm to palm, his own wild magic calling her fire to the surface, and tells her _Let it run over, Phina. Let yourself go a little,_ she finds this: she might not trust the Graves lineage, but she’s starting to trust the boy.

-

The summer of her sixth year, she meets Graves’ grandmother. She’s ancient, a being that has lived eons, ages. Her teeth are much sharper, her eyes sparkle in a thousand colors impossible to name, and her ears are pointed.

This is the other blood, the wild magic that runs through Graves’ veins. She bows deeply, and she feels a gentle hand on her brow.

“Oh, you are a clever one,” she says, sounding pleased. “Look at me now.” She meets her gaze, feels about to be sucked in before she pulls herself back, and the woman’s smile sharpens. “Very clever indeed.”

“Grandma,” Graves says with a huff and she pats his head. 

“She’s worthy of the fae blood, boy,” she tells him. “That heart. I’ve not seen fire like that in ages. It’s too bad she isn’t for you.”

Seraphina glances at Graves who shrugs, rolling his eyes. “She never knows what she’s talking about.”

“That’s disrespectful,” she tells him and his grandmother cackles. 

“Listen to the girl, little one, and go get us some tea.”

The day is unlike any other—the feel of magic crackles in the air, intoxicating and deadly. It smells like ozone, electricity and smoke, reminds of her house at home with its old bones and screaming ghosts.

Unsettling. Unconstrained.

She presses her hand to the wall on her way back from the bathroom and sees–feels _ghostly hands, griefanger, venomous slow fury, a low, bellowing scream of a stag, a hunt a hunt, blood—_

A hand pulls her back and she breathes shakily, staring at Graves’ grandmother. She looks as gentle as she can, considering what she is.

“Come with me,” she says. And they’re inside a study, decorated in gauzy, loose fabrics and cushions, with a large vanity in the center. Jewelry spills out of the drawers, messy and ornate and beautiful, and Seraphina sits down on a pillow, watching.

Graves’ grandmother waves her hand and a secret drawer slides out underneath the mirror. Two gems sit there, shimmering faintly, glowing with power.

“Yes, I think these will do,” she murmurs, and sits down in front of Seraphina. 

She picks up the violet one, deep like the hilt of her wand. “This one is for protection,” she says, looping it into a glittering silver chain. “Wear it with pride, for it is one of ours.” The weight of it sits heavy on Seraphina’s chest and she swallows hard.

“This one,” she says, holding out the yellow one, sharp and harsh like a diamond. “This one is for strength in the face of a great journey.” She slides the ring onto her finger. “Wear them both well.”

When she goes home, back into the warmth of her bed in Georgia, back to her screaming ghostly home, she stares at the stones and how they glow, unnatural, pulsing slow and steady like a heartbeat.

She never takes off the necklace. The ring, she puts in the safest place she can find.

-

When Seraphina is about to graduate—with a job as an auror-in-training at MaCUSA, and top marks in everything, her mother dies. _Mama,_ she thinks, torn with grief as the owl flits away. _Mama, please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

All her life she’s been trying to shove down her accent, the curved soft vowels and the gentle _r_ ’s. A southern thing that keeps spilling out from her at the seams. It’s the thought of dark eyes and a firm jaw that keeps her from breaking down when she receives that diploma.

 _Seraphina Picquery,_ they say, and she receives the diploma with numb fingers, with a deaf ear to cheers and loud shouts around her. When she looks up at the crowd, she meets her father’s eyes and sees _griefangerpride._

-

That summer she goes home—there’s a funeral to plan to, things to pack before she moves to New York. Georgia summers are a thick, slow heat, the sun coloring her skin dark, her silver hair wild and loose. The black dress she wears to watch her mother lowered into the ground pinches her skin, her thighs sticking to each other. Her face is wet and it tastes like salt—she doesn’t know if it’s tears or sweat.

When she presses her hands to the cool wall of the staircase hallway, she can feel the magic thrumming in the wood, throughout her body. The ghosts of the house, the ones her mother will now be a part of. She tries to imagine her stately, kind face against the backdrop of screaming agony, of slaves burned in the yard or whipped in the entrance. Of the white plantation owner cooking in his own fire. Lynched.

She wonders how he’d feel to see a black girl living in the same room as his southern belle daughter. She wonders if his face would twist in disgust, if he’d throw her out to the dogs, if he’d whip her back until her blood stained the grass scarlet. Savagely, she hopes he would. Savagely, she hopes her mother’s legacy swallows his. She hopes her own path blazes through his own. She hopes when people walk passed the grand white columns and spiraling chimney, they don’t think about the man who owned slaves. She hopes they think about the tall, dark-skinned woman with the kind eyes, of her smile, of her voice–the kind that shut down entire dance halls. She hopes they think of her mother as the woman who took back the blood and the screams. As the woman who tamed the ghosts stuck inside these walls.

She tastes blood in her mouth now and realizes she’s bitten through her own tongue.

-

It’s strange, being at home, feeling magic in her body and being surrounded by no-majes who sneer at her for the color of her skin. It’s strange, but she knows her world isn’t exempt—she remembers when she’d stood next Percival Graves after commencement, when he’d been showing her a spell he’d perfected a few days before, one they’d been trying to work out together. Advanced work, but they had always pushed each other. It wasn’t friendship exactly, but it was _respectpriderivalry._

She remembers Graves’ parents, elegant and high-born, his father with his strange, multi-colored eyes and his mother with her severe, thin mouth. Their faces at seeing them interact.

 _Dirty blood,_ she knows they thought. Not because she wasn't pureblooded—everyone knows that the Graves family has something _other_ in their bloodline even if they don't know what—but because her family had come blazing in and forced their way into society. Her great-grandfather and grandmother had brought their dark skin and pulsing magic and made the American wizarding world their own.

 _Dirty blood,_ she knows they thought. Immigrant wizards. Immigrant witches with no ties to the country. She takes a bite into a peach, lets the juice burst on her tongue, sucking it between her teeth. _Well_ , she thinks savagely, surveying the old plantation land. _Let them see my family now._ Settled on the bones of those who broke her people.

-

Auror training puts her in New York City—a loud, vibrant area with unfinished skyscrapers like metal skeletons, like a city made out of bone. It’s nothing like Georgia, slow, tinged with ash and blood and the sweet stench of honeydew. It’s nothing like Ilvermorny, bustling with magic and laughter and guiltless freedom. It’s a chaotic place that goes goes goes, and Seraphina is tired, tired of seeing the no-majes stare at her skin, sneers on their faces, tired of seeing the other aurors-in-training stare at her wand, wariness and fear in their eyes.

Finding a place to live proves difficult, distracting, until Graves sits down across from her at lunch and offers her a lazy smirk.

“What is it?” she asks him wearily.

He holds out a key and puts it in the middle of the table, an offer.

She stares at it, and then him.

“Why?”

He leans forward, with that same spark of wild magic in his eyes that had pushed them against each other at Ilvermorny.

“You’re the only one here who gives me any competition.” he says. “And,” here he grins widely. “It would make my parents mad.”

She rolls her eyes, but takes the key.

-

Seraphina doesn’t remember what it’s like to have a full night’s sleep. The hours are long and hard and her head buzzes with more spells than language, her fingers burn and crackle with the fire of spells just used, about to be used, and never used.

There’s something dark on the horizon, a slow, twisting shadow, an air of desperation that permeates throughout the auror offices.

But, first, a weekend. It’s November, the air brisk and cold, and Seraphina pours flour into a measuring cup. If she closes her eyes, she can feel her mother at her back, hands gentle on her shoulders, that scent of honeydew and earth. _Mix it up firmly, not too firmly _—her laughter, soft in her ear— _just like that. Now take it out and knead the dough, just enough, a little more gently, there you go, firefly.___

She presses the flat of her hands to the counter top and takes a deep even breath, letting it out slowly. When she shapes the dough, her fingers don’t shake. 

“Are you cooking by hand?” 

Graves. 

“Thought you’d be sleeping all day again,” she says, not stopping. She can hear him walk into the kitchen, footfalls soft as bare feet pad on tile and then stop—he’s watching her. 

“My mom,” she offers after a moment. “It’s better like this, the no-maj way.” 

He doesn’t say anything and she finally glances at him. There’s something about the way he’s looking at her that makes him appear alien, and for a second she can see how his ancestor must have looked–high cheekbones and pointed ears, and an expression on their faces that find humankind bewildering. 

After a second it’s gone and he yawns, jaw cracking and Seraphina huffs. “You should get your hair cut,” she says to him as she meticulously creates the pie crust. 

He looks offended. “What’s wrong with my hair?” 

She takes him in, the floppy dark hair that always hangs lank and filthy no matter how much he washes it, the wifebeater and long lounge pants. “Everything. Don’t you want to look the part of the professional, Percival?” 

He runs a hand through his hair and squints at her. “You’ve never complained before.” 

“That was before I had to wake up and see that mug everyday.” 

He throws his hands up and Seraphina smiles a little. 

“Fine, woman! I’ll cut it.” 

She smirks. “Good. Now get out of the kitchen.” 

When he comes back, hair freshly cut close to the scalp on the sides and longer on top, she gives him an approving once over and nudges the pie towards him. 

“I feel like a dog getting rewarded,” he complains, and Seraphina’s lips curve up. 

\- 

The thing about auror training is this: it’s hard, back-breaking work, but Seraphina excels, she _thrives_ , the fire inside her burning to do this work, to let the air around her crackle with magic and to flick that wand and see the wariness in people’s eyes turn to respect. 

Graves thrives too, moving like tempered death as he walks, slow and sauntering like a predator. He’s one step behind her, right at her heels, but he doesn’t seem to want to overtake her anymore. At lunch one day, she grabs his wrist. 

“We do better together,” she says, meeting his eyes. He inclines his head. 

“Haven’t we always?” 

Graves is a dark hound at her side, and they sweep the auror training together, graduating at the top of the class. 

And then: the war starts. 

\- 

But first, after graduation. A last hurrah–drinking firewhiskey by the fireplace and Graves is grinning, wild and bright and magic sparks at his fingers, and Seraphina laughs, too loud, head thrown back, silver hair tangling down her back. 

She looks at him, catches him staring heavy-lidded at the curve of her neck, at her collarbone, and she licks her lips, watches him stare at that movement too. Their eyes meet, electric, thinking of late nights and his hair between her fingers and his eyes manic and dark as he bares his throat for her. 

His teeth leave bruises on her thighs. 

\- 

The new graduates are told, _It’s an honor to fight for your country, it’s an honor for this to be your first assignment,_ but Seraphina knows that it’s never an honorable thing to go to war. It’s never an honorable thing to create more ghosts that scream, that haunt the bones of houses, that stain the ground red with their blood and decaying bodies. 

But, this is where they are. In war. Twenty-one years old and she sees a man die for the first time. A stray bullet that turns half his face into a shock of red, and he’s down, he’s falling, _someone get a medic! someone get a_

But she knows he’s dead. 

She turns away. It’s messy, not just because of its nature but because her superiors have no idea what they’re doing. She’s already caught five different ways to make their line of offense easier and thought of four different strategies that would be more effective. 

But she’s young and green and she lets her magic go savage, using wand and hand alike, letting that fire inside her consume and consume. 

Every night, she thinks of her mother. _Mama, mama, I’m sorry,_ she thinks, clutching the purple hilt of her wand so tight that her knuckles lose blood. _I’m sorry for putting more screams into houses, for making others have to grow up like I did. I’m sorry, Mama, I’m sorry._

_Firefly,_ she hears in her sleep that night. _My little firefly. You’re going to change the world._

She wakes with tears on her cheeks, her breath rattling in her chest. 

\- 

The first time her and Graves work together in the war, they scorch the earth. Literally. Their commanding officer dies, a burst of green against his skin and he falls lifeless to the ground, and Seraphina acts, barks out orders and Graves _attacks_ at her command, his teeth sharp against the jugular of a man and her wand letting out a stream of magic so dark and red it looks like flames. 

There’s nothing left at the end, just their team and a pile of smoking bodies around them, and Graves’ teeth still pink with blood. 

_Firebreather,_ people start to call her, _Phoenix_. They don’t call Graves anything, for he’s just death come to follow at her heels. 

The officers look at the two of them with something like respect in their eyes. Something like fear. They promote them both and split them up. 

\- 

“What is he?” someone asks her. She turns to look, eyebrow arching, gratified to see the woman quail a bit. 

“Who?” 

“The Hound.” 

She almost laughs. Graves, the hound. Instead, she downs her shot of firewhiskey and gets up, placing her hands on the bar table. 

“Does it matter?” she asks. “I’m the one you should be afraid of.” 

When she leaves, the crowd parts for her like the red sea. 

\- 

She throws up the first time she sees children’s bodies. They’re so small, little no-maj kids with dirty faces and unseeing eyes, curled together under the debris of a house that collapsed on top of them. Her fault. _It’s her fault._

She hadn’t checked, she hadn’t made sure, _she hadn’t made sure—_

And now two children are dead. Innocents. She spits on the ground, shaking in that way that vomiting leaves you, tears pricking the corner of her eyes. _I’m sorry, Mama,_ she thinks, briefly, and closes her eyes as a breeze cools her face. She stares up at the night sky, the stars that shine onto a planet torn apart by blood, by creatures who must kill each other. 

__She thinks of fireflies at home. When she was eight, her father had scooped her up and taken her to the top of the hill behind the house. He’d given her a jar, whispered, _Alright, Sera, catch a firefly. Watch them glow._ __

And she had, and the two of them had trapped it into jar, glowing slow and steady. After a few long moments, her father had taken her hand. 

_Now, let it go._

_Papa, why?_

_You never want to be responsible for the death of a creature. Not even one as little as that. Do you want to see its light go out, Sera?_

_No, Papa._

_So let it go._

She breathes shakily, staring at her hands and wondering how many lights she’s snuffed out. 

\- 

The Phoenix burns her way through Europe, through the trenches, leaving a trail of ash in her wake, a trail of destruction and crushing victory. At twenty-five she’s already a major, has people under her that are older than her. She’s wiry muscle, silver hair pulled in a loose braid, the glint of her purple wand always in her hand. 

_The Phoenix,_ they whisper about her. _The firebreather._ But there’s always whispers about the young who claw their way to the top, the young who gain fame in war, gain fear, gain rumors. 

_The Phoenix leaves behind ashes and smoke, and close at her heels follows the Hound, death in his teeth and the scent of decay in his mouth._

But there are others too—the rumors of a red-haired monster, a snake in their midst, he strikes and he’s gone. The rumors of a blonde-haired wizard with a silken tongue, who passes through and leaves wreckage in his wake. 

Seraphina is aware of her name, aware of the way her fire magic has manifested itself outside of her, has given her that reputation, but right now she feels extinguished. Stares at the no-maj at her feet and kneels down in the dirt, closing his eyes with her hands. Skin the same shade as hers, he’d died brave, staring in the face of an evil he’d never seen before, a fanged snarling creature with more fear in its eyes than malice, and she’d been too slow to save him. 

“You didn’t kill it,” a voice says behind her and she lifts her head, not bothering to stand or look at the source. 

“It was scared, that’s all. Not its fault,” she says. _I don’t want to be responsible for more death,_ she doesn’t say. After a long moment she looks up and sees red hair matted dark with blood and dirt, kneeling over the creature with a hand flat on its neck. 

_The red-haired snake,_ she thinks. He meets her eyes, and she can make out freckles under the filth, and one eye is reptilian yellow. 

“Go on,” she says. “Before someone sees you.” He stares at her for a long moment and she inclines her head. One monster to another, one whisper to another. And he disappears, creature with him. 

\- 

She can taste the end in the air, and she knows what’s coming when she sees Graves make his way towards her. He’s keen-eyed, lopes like a bloodhound on the hunt, and his eyes are dark with the things he’s seen. Still, he stands at her side as if he’s never left and she’s glad for it. 

“They’ve paired us again, Phina,” he says, voice low, pleased. 

“It’s coming.” She meets his eyes. “The end.” He bares his teeth, eyes glittering, ready for the final dash of the Wild Hunt. 

“Graves,” she says quietly, taking the shimmering stone necklace off and pressing it into his hand. 

“Phina,” he says, curling his fingers around the stone. “It’s yours. You don’t give back a fae’s gift.” 

“But if I don’t—” 

“You _will_ ,” he hisses, and his eyes are the same as that night long ago, in their apartment, near the fire and drunk on firewhiskey, dark and manic and _hungry._

She blows air out through her nose, tugs the necklace back on. Something in Graves seems to settle. 

\- 

It’s a fight that leaves the earth barren, leaves it dead and dying and empty for years to come. Seraphina feels like she’s burning up, exploding out in shards. Everything inside her she gives gives _gives_ , making herself bare and ragged and empty. 

The Phoenix shatters and burns and the Hound finishes off with the kill and the battle is done, the war is spiraling everything is finishing and the phoenix burns and burns and the Seraphina she was dies and— 

—And she is reborn from the ashes. 

\- 

She dreams of bones picked clean from flesh, of scarlet blood soaking in grass, glassy, unstaring eyes. A loud, mournful call echos in the air, and carrion birds circle, getting lower and lower. Her breath comes out ragged as she protects the bodies–children, a man, a woman with a swollen belly, _I’m sorry I’m sorry, Mama I’m sorry_ —and the bird swoops down and she gets a look at its gleaming orange eyes before— 

She wakes up. Her heart hammers and she clutches at her chest, feeling constricted and closed in; she sees white in the corner of her eyes and she can’t get enough breath, she’s drowning, she’s drowning and— 

The door bursts open and someone wraps their arms around her. 

“Shh, shh, Sera, shh. You’re home,” her father says. 

“Papa,” she rasps and starts sobbing, ragged and desperate and full-bodied. “Papa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, _I’m sorry_.” 

He holds her and she curls up against him, feeling all of eight the first time a no-maj shoved her in the dirt and said her kind weren’t welcome, all of twelve when she came home from Ilvermorny for her first winter break, all of fifteen after her first crush broke her heart, all of seventeen when her mother died. 

She cries and cries, feeling all of the deaths around her, pouring out of her. Gutted and empty. 

\- 

New York City isn’t the same when she comes back. There are ghosts there, a haunted look to it that she thought she’d left behind in Georgia, in Europe. The ghosts of men and women who never came back. She feels old, a far cry from the twenty-one year old that left, to the twenty-nine year old that exists now. 

“Graves,” she says on their first day back, tucked away in the corner of the cafeteria at lunch time. 

He looks at her. He’s quiet too, haunted and hollowed out. 

“I’m going to run for president.” He stares at her for a long moment then smiles, slow. 

“You know I’m by your side, Phina.” 

She relaxes against the seat. She knew—but it’s good to hear. 

\- 

She strikes quick—the new election is in a year and a half, and she makes her bid and watches as Graves makes his way into Magical Security. 

_She’s young,_ they say. _Untested._

_A woman_ , they don’t say. They don’t mention her skin color—too polite, they are. They think they’re better than the no-majes in this, but they aren’t. Just quieter. 

_Not young enough to be sent to war,_ she says back. _Not too young to become a major. You’ll trust me to lead the charge in ending life but not to preserve it?_

They still call her the Phoenix; they’re still scared of her fire, of her passion, of her ruthless and cunning. They’re wary of the scent of her inevitability. Those that do not accept it will not continue the journey with her and they know it. 

It’s a dramatic run, so the newscasters say. Seraphina takes to wearing her hair in a headdress, takes to wrapping the family and fae jewels into her clothing like armor. She tilts her head up, jaw strong, stately, even when they bring up her past, when they bring up the scandal of living with an unmarried man in her youth, when they bring up her war deeds. 

Here, she always smiles, with too many teeth. “I was doing what the country told me. You can ask them,” she says. “They gave me promotions for it.” 

On the day of the election, she sits in Graves’ apartment, lazily watching him make drinks. She’s loose-limbed, relaxed. Inevitability is her friend. The Hound paces the apartment after giving her the drink and she laughs. 

“Sit down,” she says. “Tell me about the new auror you like. Tina, was it?” 

When the announcement comes, she smiles, closes her eyes. 

_It has chosen you for a reason._

She vows to make her mother proud. 

\- 

Inauguration day shines bright, a crisp January morning in the city. Dressed head to toe in shades of purple, jewels glittering at her brow and fingers, she waits to be called up. 

She puts her left hand on the sacred book, glittering yellow ring pulsing to the rhythm of her heartbeat, and smiles faintly at the shifting of feet. Even in the wizarding world, the left hand is still seen as a mark of…strangeness. Oddity. 

“I, Seraphina Picquery, solemnly swear to uphold the Wizarding American values and to protect it from all threats.” 

The crowd stands and Seraphina, her head held high, begins the next phase of her life. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from _the things they carried_ by tim o'brien aka my only experience with war writing
> 
> anyway. i love seraphina and everyone else can fight me bye
> 
> come talk to me at resistanceposterboy on tumblr!


End file.
